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Evolution of Life

Water is the womb of creation. The primordial ocean, the ancient soup of chemicals: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorous and sulfur; the elements from which life emerged. Mycoplasm, the tiniest of bacterial life, creating the first membrane that separated itself from its environment: a semi-permeable membrane that selects certain chemical from the environmental soup and excretes metabolites into the external world. The bacteria changes within itself;evolving and creating a chemical factory for producing new molecules, organic molecules, and hydrocarbon chains: amino acids, proteins, fats, RNA and DNA. The creation of every metabolic process that is used by all life forms today. Cyanobacteria (blue, green algae), was amongst the first organisms, takes simple atoms and converts them into organic compounds. Systemically, all life is made up of cells and cells have membranes that allow the microbe to interact with the outside environment selectively. That is what we term life.

But what is life? It is a cell or groups of cells organized to survive and reproduce.Evolution is the process of going from the simple to the complex: scientists believe that life started from a single celled organism and evolved to a multi-celled organisms of plants and animal; from algae to kelp, from sponges to jelly fish, from fish to amphibians to reptiles to mammals- up the phylogenetic tree; complexity building upon complexity.

What enables the process of corrections and changes? Mutations, gene trading and symbiosis.Evolution created protozoa, fungus, plants and animals. The single celled algae capable of photosynthesis, using that energy and the constituents from the environment,to create organic molecules. Animals use the plants for energy to make their own structural molecules. In all animals, bacterial cells became mitochondria of the bigger cells. Primordially, the microbial world had figured out the biological processes necessary to make the molecules of life, and these primitive pathways of metabolism operate human’s highly evolved bodies. Life is therefore a synbiotic relationship. We are not alone; we are an integral part of our environment.

The principles of life are comprised of membranes, metabolism and symbiotic relationships with the environment. Humans came into a world rich in diversity of life, systems of animals, plants and microbes living together. An environment that has progressed symbiotically over the eons, delicately balancing systems of relationships; giving, taking, sharing and living. A creation that allowed for evolution to proceed towards diversity of life forms, to interact and relate to other organisms as part of life’s principle of existing together.

Creation and evolution began in the ocean. But the planet ecosystem is losing ground. Life on earth is suffering. One half of the wetlands, one half of the grassland and one half of the tropical forests are gone. More complex species are suffering: one quarter of amphibians, reptiles and mammals are endangered. By 2045 all the big fish in the sea are predicted to be extinct. Evolution is shifting backwards in the direction of mold, bacteria and jellyfish.

In the coming weeks we will be investigating this de-evolution and what we can do to reverse it.In the next communication,we will continue to discuss the watery home of our beginnings: the ocean. We know how our polluting ways are decimating the land and air. But what about the ocean, so vast, covering ¾ of the earth surface, thought in the past impervious to our polluting ways, what is the state of its ecological health and the ramification to us?

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Clinical Note: Back to Basics

Our bodies need a lively, healthy balance of bacteria. Create a healthy microbiome community with the Original Synbiotic Formula.The Last Quiz Answer: Our bird is an immature Laysan albatross. The brown features on its head are remnants of the immature downy plumage. Our wild bird was identified by Mark Myers, curator of animals at the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, WA.

Dr. Lynn Margulis presents an answer to the one enduring mystery of evolution that Charles Darwin could never solve. The source of the inherited variation that gives rise to new species.